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Kris pulled her hand free. “You’re leaving?”
He was already out of bed, ducking into the bathroom to retrieve his clothes, coming back out again buttoning his jeans, his shirt hanging from his hand. “I have work.”
“What kind of work?”
He glanced up at the suspicion in her voice. “Don’t ye trust me?”
“Yes.…”
“Yer mouth says, ‘Yes,’ while yer face says, But…”
“You don’t tell me anything.”
“Then why would ye trust me?”
Why did she? Simple. “If you don’t tell me anything, at least you aren’t lying.”
A shadow crossed his face, and her stomach clenched. He was lying. His name probably wasn’t even Liam Grant. No wonder no one knew who he was.
He crossed the room and sat next to her. “Who lied to you so well and so often that ye dinnae trust anymore?”
“Who didn’t?” she muttered.
Liam brushed his fingertips over her cheek. “So many?” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
She wanted to rest her head on his bare chest and press her lips to his skin, pull him back into bed, and forget about talking at all. What was it about him that made her not only trust when she shouldn’t but also lust at a time when most wouldn’t?
Liam glanced at the window again where the darkness had begun to become light. Then he stood and covered all that luscious skin with a shirt. “Meet me tonight at MacLeod’s?”
“When?”
“After the sun goes down.”
“What kind of time is that?”
“The best time. I like the night.”
“Why?”
“Because I dinnae have to work.”
“What do you do?”
He hesitated, and for an instant she just knew he was going to lie. When he spoke she wasn’t all that certain he had not.
“I protect the loch.”
“Like a park ranger?”
“A bit. I walk about, do what needs doing. Pick up the garbage. Clip the trees that hang too far down. Make sure the roads are nae full of potholes. Help the wee animals and such.”
“You patrol Loch Ness, yet you’ve never seen the monster.”
“Do ye ken how big the loch is?” he asked, then continued before she could answer. “Twenty-four miles long, over a mile wide in places. The deepest part,” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, “near Urquhart Castle is more than twice the mean depth of the North Sea.”
Kris wasn’t sure what a mean depth was, but she got what he meant. The loch was damn deep.
“The surface sits fifty-two feet above sea level, but the tallest point around it is over twelve hundred feet higher than that. It’s bordered by mountains and rock face and forest. There are parts ye can barely get to on foot. Professional divers speak of a terrifying blackness that surrounds them at an easy depth of fifty feet. The shock isnae that I havenae seen Nessie but that anyone has at all.”
